Byzantium

and marble steps descended to an open plaza crowded with the elite of the Imperial Court: Magisters, Patricians, Proconsular Patricians, Senators. The wives were deployed in force, for these open-air receptions readily encouraged the informal mixing of the sexes.

‘Hetairarch!’ importuned the Logothete of the Dromus, his ragged rodent’s teeth showing. ‘You must come to my offices and furnish me with the most current information on Bulgar infantry tactics. I need to know which of their weapons are most effective, from whence they are obtaining them, that sort of thing. Perhaps we can inhibit the trade in these materials.’ The Logothete peered into Haraldr’s chased golden goblet. ‘Discard that common stuff, Hetairarch. Let me introduce you to a vintage from Italia.’ The Logothete pointed to a cubicularius standing near a larger-than-lifesize water-spouting bronze lion.

The eunuch tipped his silver ewer and poured Haraldr a goblet of ruby-coloured wine. The Logothete looked up at the new Hetairarch with the dark eyes of Asia. ‘I believe there is some misunderstanding between you and the Orphanotrophus Joannes.’

‘No. The Orphanotrophus and I understand each other entirely.’ Haraldr silently reflected on that understanding. He had decided that he would wait and see if the Emperor was as courageous when seated on his throne as he was when slogging over Bulgar corpses, and if so, give him an opportunity to deal with his brother Joannes’s crimes. But this delay did not concern him, because he realized he already had Joannes on the rack, just like one of Joannes’s own victims in the Neorion. And until the Emperor – or, if necessary, Haraldr himself -meted Joannes the ultimate justice he deserved, Haraldr would force Joannes, in his own fashion, to praise the Pantocrator.

The Logothete licked his lips. ‘I would like to mediate your differences. As a servant of Rome, I am concerned with reducing fissures at the level of government you now occupy. And I believe that the Orphanotrophus currently finds himself in a posture that would encourage him to forge alliances on terms quite favourable to his newly won friends.’

Haraldr drained his cup and handed it to the hovering eunuch. Thank you, Logothete. The wine was excellent. At some time I should like you to advise me on how I can import this vintage. You may tell the Orphanotrophus that I have received his … invitation and am considering a reply.’

Haraldr walked back past the Mystic Fountain; he was detained by the greetings of half a dozen dignitaries along the way. He looked enviously at a gull soaring in the lapis-lazuli sky and wished he could enjoy the beauty of this day and setting without the grasping company of the elite among Rome’s elite, who merely seemed to increase in avarice, insincerity and dissimilitude the higher they rose in their multihued hierarchy. Even the women seemed to have lost the joy of flirtation and approached their prospective liaisons with the grim intensity of grizzled field commanders. Of course, there was a battle to be won on that field as well, Haraldr reminded himself.

‘Hetairarch.’ The wife of the Senator and Proconsular Patrician Romanus Scylitzes ambushed Haraldr in front of the gleaming silver door of the Triconchus, the domed palace that faced the Mystic Fountain on the east. She was blonde, elegant, with small, perfect Grecian features and a beauty curiously enhanced by the evidence, found in small creases about her eyes and lips, that it had recently begun to fade. Her husband was the most notorious windbag at court, reviled by even the pompous Hellenes, with whom he affected intellectual kinship. ‘You will think me silly when I tell you my husband is watching us.’ Haraldr looked around and located the vigilant husband. The white-haired Senator and Proconsular Patrician, surrounded by his posturing cronies in the Attalietes Dhynatoi clique, was indeed conducting a clumsy clandestine surveillance; each time he sipped from his cup his eyes darted over the rim of the goblet and allowed him a glimpse of his wife. ‘Please do not think that I presume,’ she stammered, her cheeks flushed in vivid contrast to the high, pearl-studded white collar of her scaramangium. ‘He is watching to see if I do as I am told. He wants me to thank you profusely for stemming the tide of the Bulgar advance – I’m sorry that I cannot quite remember the phrase that compared your feats to those of Alexander – but I am to thank you because our own estates in Thessalonica theme were spared a great loss by your bravery.’

‘Tell him I accept his gratitude and am greatly pleased by the emissary he has sent to express it.’ Haraldr understood now; the Emperor had granted Haraldr one third of the tax revenues from Paristron, Macedonia and Thessalonica for the next five years, and apparently the land magnate Scylitzes was hoping for some kind of reduction in the amounts his estates owed. ‘However, I cannot intervene in the matter of his taxes, which I understand have already been reduced by various connivances.’

Scylitzes’s wife almost purpled with shame, and Haraldr was sickened by the imminence of her tears. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘You were only performing your filial duty. I should have been more gracious.’

‘No,’ she said, shaking her head and appearing to gain control of herself. ‘It is we who should be ashamed. He would not approach you on this issue because he would never deign to speak personally to a--’ She blushed again.

‘Barbaros,’ offered Haraldr. He watched the insufferable Scylitzes spew forth his putative eloquence in accompaniment to the spouting of the fountain. ‘So with all those words at his avail, he must send his wife to speak for him. I appreciate your liberality in delivering his request.’

‘He … he says I should offer myself to you if necessary.’

‘Would you?’

‘You would not accept.’

‘I would accept your offer. I simply would not agree to reduce his taxes, because I could not in fairness accept so much from him and give back so little in return.’

The woman smiled at the flattering reprieve from both her husband’s demands and the prospect of having this giant rip her in two, although she now wondered if the barbaros’s tongue was capable of other subtleties. ‘You are a kind man, Hetairarch,’ she said, bowing slightly as she returned to her flatulent spouse.

For a barbaros, Haraldr told himself, completing her thought. He was about to find some excuse to make to the Parakoimomenos when he noticed that even Scylitzes had been rendered momentarily speechless. He walked around to the fountain to see what marvel had occasioned this miracle. Maria. He watched her emerge from the ambulatory surrounding the Sigma. She did not wear her usual revealing costume but instead had donned a white scaramangium and pallium in spite of the heat. Still, there was the same sensual, graceful insouciance in her walk that arrested both men and women. Haraldr watched the eyes of the dignitaries as they studied her, and he realized that Maria was considered, much like him, an exotic, undeniably puissant force but also dangerous and unsavoury. Because of her openness and candour, she had come to represent all the secret schemings and scandals locked in their own far less honest breasts.

She saw him and came directly for him, her face glowing and her fierce blue eyes wet. She held out her hands but did not embrace him. ‘I will not burden you with my questionable repute among these august personages,’ she said, smiling radiantly but with tears now rolling off her lashes. Haraldr wanted to hold her but reasoned that she knew the manners of this court far better than he.

‘I am sorry I have not been able to see you,’ Haraldr said. ‘This new office requires all my time. I am fortunate to be able to enjoy – if that is the word – even a quasi-official function such as this. But of course you are always with me. You were with me there.’

She shook her head and the tears ran down her cheeks. ‘I am so glad you are alive. Just knowing that has made each day a joy.’

‘Do you know that you saved my life?’

‘But I didn’t,’ she said happily. ‘You went in spite of my warning, and yet you are alive.’ She looked up at him as if beholding the miracle of his resurrection. ‘My dreams are meaningless.’ She said this with such great happiness and relief that Haraldr decided not to tell her about the creek, and the king who had waited beyond it.

‘You saved me because your soul helped me forward when there was nothing else,’ he improvised, a distortion that was less profound than the truth.

‘You do not have to say that,’ she said. ‘What you told me before you left was enough.’ Suddenly her eyes doubted.

‘That was true,’ he told her,’ and still is. Why, in fact, I survived out there I do not know for certain. But you were indeed with me then.’

‘Yes. That has the resonance of truth,’ she said, drawing herself up and projecting her breast with wry self-confidence. She seemed very girlish and keen, perhaps more like Anna. ‘Since you have been gone, I have